


While You Were Sleeping

by bjfic_archivist



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Canon, Romance, Season/Series 03, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-15
Updated: 2008-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-27 14:15:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12082746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bjfic_archivist/pseuds/bjfic_archivist
Summary: Season 3. Night-time reflections.





	While You Were Sleeping

**Author's Note:**

> Note from IrishCaelan, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Brian/Justin Fanfiction Archive](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Brian_Justin_Fanfiction_Archive). To preserve the archive, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in September 2017. I posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Brian/Justin Fanfiction Archive collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/bjfic/profile).

**Brian  
  
** There was something so intimate in the act of watching Justin sleep.  
  
I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was that created that aura of soothing tranquillity; why it was so comforting to just lay there beside him and watch his sleeping face.   
  
In the months that followed our 'historic reunification', I found myself doing it far more often than I’d ever admit- for hours sometimes. But these impromptu night vigils never lost their mysterious captivation.  
  
Justin was beautiful in sleep as he was in waking- but it was a different kind of beauty; a secret, quiet beauty eclipsed in waking hours by the super highway of thought pocketed by construction sites of ideas and bustling metropolises of abstraction and emotion.  
  
But in sleep, the veil of peaceful serenity that fell across Justin’s resplendent features was accompanied by a childish innocent grace as delicate as the wings of a butterfly.  
  
Sometimes as I lay there watching, the dawn light would begin to stream in from the open curtains to lie across Justin’s countenance in dusky rose and pale ochre, but other times, his softly defined features were accentuated only by the deep mauves and subtle indigos of diffracted moonlight.   
  
To just lie by his side and watch his requiescence made me feel inexplicably closer to him. I was sometimes overwhelmed by feelings of protectiveness and perhaps possessiveness; here was a fallen, sleeping angel who was mine again to have and to hold.  
  
Occasionally he would murmur or whimper soft words or phrases in his sleep. Often the words were jumbled and monosyllabic, incomprehensible in their distortion (although I always had to laugh when phrases came out sounding like ‘want a giraffe’ or ‘eat the babies’).  
  
But now that he’d come back to me, it was my name that came out most often in his sighing exhalations, the two syllables amalgamated into one and always spoken like a question. ‘Brian…?’   
  
I’d always considered this to be a subliminal plea for the assurance that I was still there- physically and emotionally- and I couldn’t help but take him gently into my arms and hold him as he slept on, whispering comforting words he couldn’t hear into the silken softness of his hair.  
  
Justin nearly always slept on his back, spread-eagled across the mattress with his limbs extended outward, making me think that making snow angels might play a major role in his dreamworld.   
  
He would turn his head turned sideways on the pillow so that his ash blond hair spread out across the dark material like a golden fan.   
  
His left arm was usually tucked in under his head or splayed out to the side, his fingertips sometimes just grazing against my shoulder or chest. I would never move away or towards this brushing contact, but would sometimes try to focus steadily on the feeling of that touch until through it, I felt the sensation of Justin spread to every part of my body.  
  
He always slept with his right hand lying across his chest; his palm facing downward, the fingertips resting on a place just above his heart. He’d started to sleep like that shortly after his bashing and I wondered if he was conscious of it- I’d never told him.   
  
But he did it so predictably and consistently that I’d come to associate the pose exclusively with him.  
  
He was a heavy sleeper and I could easily touch him without waking him up. I would sometimes lay my own hand down on top of the one that rested above his heart, forging a connection with him that I could never quite replicate when he was awake.   
  
Sometimes I would lift his listless hand in mine and hold it above my own heart, loving the way that Justin’s fingers would curl softly around mine even as he slept.  
  
One night I’d taken his hand and had gently spread the fingers in order to find the thin white scars that criss-crossed the web of skin between index and middle finger.  
  
A rose had done that to him. The thorns of a rose.  
  
When Justin had first told me the story of how he’d torn Ethan’s roses apart with his bare hands, I’d actually laughed; what a perfect, suitable way for that little synthetic relationship to end.  
  
But that night, in the still hours of the early dawn, I’d stroked the thin faint scars with my fingertips and it had suddenly seemed immensely tragic.   
  
I thought of the little droplets of crimson blood falling onto the torn rose petals, flowing onto the dying flower's leaves and down its stem until it seemed as if the rose itself were bleeding.  
  
And in a way it had been.   
  
Bleeding the harsh reality of deceit onto the pure white fabric of innocence, leaving a stain that would never disappear.  
  
But it didn’t matter, not anymore.  
  
I knew that my eyes were the only eyes Justin would wake up to, knew my arms were the only arms that would hold him when he woke.  
  
And even though the words themselves were still hidden among others…my voice was the only voice he could hear saying ‘I love you’.  
  
~~~  
  
 **Justin**  
  
It was such a precious anomaly to actually catch Brian sleeping. And in those rare instances when I did, I savoured every second that he would allow me to just lay there and watch.  
  
He belonged to that rare and extremely fortunate subset of workaholic that could go on for days on end, functioning at 100% efficiently, with the bare minimum of sleep. It was as if he were fuelled by some inexhaustible power source that only rarely needed recharging.   
  
My energizer boyfriend.  
  
He managed to be both an early riser and a night owl; always up before me in the mornings and nearly always falling asleep long after I’d slipped into my own dreamworld.  
  
And when he did finally settle down into torpidity, Brian didn’t even need to ‘sleep hard’ in order to make up for his abbreviated downtime.  
  
He was an incredibly light sleeper, waking at the drop of a pin as if he’d only just been submersed below the surface of slumber. If he was in bed before I was, he was always awake when I climbed in beside him.  
  
There had been times in the past when I’d gone to the loft very late at night to find him in bed, but he’d never been sleeping.   
  
I was never entirely sure whether or not I’d woken him with the whirring of the elevator and metallic clang of the sliding door, or whether he’d been sitting up in bed already, just waiting for me.   
  
If I woke in the night, he’d always be there wide awake, reaching out to me, whispering my name softly.   
  
If I’d awoken with a cry and a jerk, he’d take me in his arms and spoon me tenderly into the crook of his body, murmuring gentle words to me.   
  
If I’d merely stirred and woken for no particular reason, I’d feel his hand resting lightly on my hip and his lips on my neck or shoulders, whispering lethargically to go back to sleep.  
  
But very occasionally, Brian’s sleep would be marginally deeper than usual, and those were the nights when my waking would cause him only to stir drowsily before sliding back into slumber.   
  
On those nights, I would purposely stay awake and just observe him as he slept, watching as a botanist might watch the epic flowering of a century plant.  
  
He was so beautiful.   
  
Of course he was always beautiful, but the placidity and quietude of sleep defined and accentuated something in his soft features so often hidden when he was awake.   
  
Brian never wore masks, but he did have airs and graces which strengthened his personality and emphasised his character. But when he was asleep, these fragile layers of his invisible external shield fell away, exposing something no one but me ever saw.  
  
It was innocence, I think, and may be venerability. And it was utterly perfect; flawless.   
  
The quintessential Brian.  
  
His face was always soft and peaceful, devoid of the lines of deliberation or merriment that frequently creased it. His long, dark eyelashes contrasted so beautifully with the mastery of his smooth, high cheekbones and his fine pale golden skin.   
  
I was fascinated by the way his lashes fluttered delicately as his eyes moved restlessly behind the closed eyelids.  
  
He was a still and silent sleeper. Whereas I would toss and turn, roll over and flail my arms as I slept, Brian would often wake up in the same position he’d fallen asleep in. He would usually sleep on his side, curled up with his long legs drawn up slightly and his arms drawn in close against his chest.   
  
When I’d first started sleeping in his bed almost three years ago, he used to lie facing away from me on his left side. But during the months I’d lived with him after my bashing, Brian had subconsciously switched to lying preferentially on his right side, facing me. He’d done so ever since.   
  
I didn’t think he knew this and I wasn’t sure I’d ever tell him.  
  
It was just one of those things; one of our little things.  
  
I was afraid to touch him when he was sleeping; knowing that the merest brush of my fingertips would call him back from his reverie.   
  
His beauty in sleep was so delicate, like that of a single raindrop hanging from the end of a blade of grass; the smallest nudge or gust of wind and the image would be lost.  
  
But I was content to just watch, content in knowing that he allowed me watch him in his venerable, innocent sleep.  
  
And I was content in knowing that my eyes were the only eyes Brian would wake up to, knew my lips were the only lips that could wake him with a kiss.  
  
And my voice was the only voice he could hear saying ‘I love you’.

THE END  



End file.
